Hi there,
And welcome back to your daily practice.
Today is one of my favorite practices.
It's called a butterfly hug,
And we're gonna combine it with a one to two ratio breath practice.
This is where our exhalation will be twice as long as our inhalation,
And we'll practice our deep diaphragmatic breathing as part of this practice as well.
So,
We'll go ahead and start by crossing our hands over,
And we're just gonna tap gently.
Go ahead and just start,
See how it feels.
On either our shoulders,
Maybe our collarbone,
Maybe on the arms,
Just whatever feels good for you.
So kind of try it out,
See what feels as best.
Comfortable as possible of those options.
And we're just gonna tap at a pace.
It's not too fast,
Not too slow.
And just kind of let that rhythm.
Continue on its own.
And then we're gonna bring our attention to our breath,
Breathing in through the nose.
And breathing out through the nose.
Our deep diaphragmatic breaths.
Taking as long as we need to inhale.
So the lungs are full and then exhaling completely until they're empty.
Closing our eyes here and just feeling the breath and feeling the tapping.
On your next inhale,
See how many taps.
It takes to breathe in completely.
And count how many taps it takes to breathe out completely.
You may notice these are the same.
You may notice that they're different.
And so just take a few cycles of breath to have these match.
Breathing in for a count.
And breathing out for the same count.
And just let that be natural.
There's nothing right or wrong.
Breathing in,
Tapping,
Breathing out the same number of taps.
And now on our next exhale,
Extending the length of tapping by one.
Inhaling for the same.
Exhaling one longer.
Inhaling.
Exhaling one longer.
On the next exhale,
Extend that count one more.
Breathing in.
Breathing out,
Extending.
And with each breath.
See if you can extend just one count longer.
And it may take a few cycles of breath for that to feel natural.
And you may get to the point where that's as far as you can go.
But if you're able to extend the exhale just a little bit longer each time.
Maybe even getting to the point where the exhale is twice as loud.
As long as the inhale.
And it's not a contest or a competition.
The goal is just to have a longer exhalation.
So just give yourself some time with this practice.
Some days it may be easier to get to that.
1 to 2 ratio.
But either way,
As long as the exhale is longer than our inhale.
We're activating our parasympathetic.
Nervous system response,
Our relaxation response.
And by crossing our arms over at the chest.
This is a practice called bilateral stimulation.
This also helps to balance the two brain hemispheres.
Activating the parasympathetic response.
And we're moving,
We're using our body,
We're sensing.
The feeling of the tapping,
The movement of the tapping,
It brings us into this moment here and now.
The rhythm is calming to our nervous system.
Lots of different factors at play here.
That can take us out of worry,
Out of stress,
Out of anxiety,
And into relaxation just with a simple practice.
So go ahead and just let the breath be natural.
Let the hands relax.
And just notice what you're feeling here.
Reflecting,
Noticing.
And sometimes this practice can be a little bit challenging.
There's a lot going on.
We can start to second guess and wonder if we're doing it right.
If that was your experience,
That's fine.
We continue practicing.
And it's different every time,
And eventually.
We get to the point where Our body understands what we're asking of it.
You can also separate these two practices using just butterfly hug and deep breath.
Or without the butterfly hug and tapping,
You can just do that longer exhalation.
A really great practice if you're sitting in traffic or trying to fall asleep or any other time where you just want to kind of bring things down a little bit.
A longer exhalation activates the relaxation response.
I hope you enjoyed these practices.
I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.
